


blue electric angels

by irnan



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-28 23:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>don't give me all this hokum about the midnight mayor: or, the one where john blake is dick grayson's older cousin ala Earth-16 is gotham city's matthew swift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blue electric angels

**Author's Note:**

> So, um. First batfic! And the pov's not even a comics-canon character. On the other hand I needed that, because this is basically an exploration of all of MY personal issues with "Batman" - not Bruce Wayne, that noble and senseless sufferer from the disease, not uncommon in fiction, known by professionals as "Epicus Manpainus, Stage Terminal, strain 11C, ie Highly Resistant To Character Development". Rather I have a lot of Issues with the concept of Batman as this rich white bloke with a seriously problematic and in some ways frankly condescending saviour complex. (I feel like that's demonstrated particularly well in his treatment of Jason Todd and how Bruce doesn't actually engage with the traumas Jason HAS, but rather appears to have convinced himself that All Traumas Are Equal, Therefore What Worked For Me Will Work For Jason, but this is an AN to an entirely different fic, so I'm going to stop now.) Basically, my Personal Feelings are _all over_ this fic. No, really, _all over_. It is an Author Tract. 
> 
> (Now that I am done with it, I hope to be able to write Bruce far more objectively.)
> 
> Title from Kate Griffin. (What do you mean, Nightwing's electric blue fingerstripes are important to his character precisely because the colour of them demonstrates so unmistakably his refusal to Be Like Bruce?????)

When he was twelve Robin got sick of the constant barrage of Robin Hood jokes and announced his intention to go by his far less joke-prone middle name of John – or at least Johnny, to avoid confusion with his uncle – for the rest of his natural life. Everyone had laughed; then Aunt Mary had said, fine, she’d be calling the baby her little Robin from now on. It suited him much better, as he’d at least been born on the right day for it. He could consider it a trade: his name for Uncle John’s.

Robin remembers how he laughed and stuck his tongue out at her and how Mom had ruffled his hair and how –

Anyway, it’s Dick who starts calling him _Robin_ again, because imagine addressing your cousin by the name of your dead father when you know it’s not his actual name.

Robin doesn’t mind.

*********

He’s a month shy of eighteen when the ropes – when Mom and Dad and Uncle John and Aunt Mary – when It Happens, but he looks Gordon in the eye and tells him different without flinching. Whatsit matter when he’s already got his high school diploma and stuff? By the time Gordon’s dug up a birth certificate that says different, it’ll be too late.

He hopes.

“That means they can declare me Dick’s legal guardian,” he says. “Right?”

Gordon studies him for a moment, and Robin thinks _crap_ ; he didn’t mean to sound desperate.

“You’ll be lucky if they do,” he says gently.

There’s a man from the audience hanging around at the edges of their conversation, dark-haired and richly dressed, who can’t quite seem to look away from Dick. Robin’s _this close_ to walking over and kicking the creeper in the balls.

*********

Dad’s comatose. He’ll be comatose forever. Robin wants to tell them to turn the damn machines off, because Dad would hate, hate, _hate_ to be left like this, but –

He doesn’t have the courage.

When he asks about hospital bills, they tell him that a man called Bruce Wayne has taken care of all of them.

“He was there at the circus, you see, and he felt just awful about what happened –“

Good of him to let me know, thinks Robin. Another time the pity might churn in his guts, but, let’s face it, the Grayson-Blake-Lloyds are carnies, gypsies, circus freaks who couldn’t buy health insurance even if they had the money for it. What choice does he have except to accept the man’s charity?

*********

He’s just watched his family fall to their deaths under his and his baby cousin’s very noses, so he’s not about to call them lucky, but maybe the universe is a tiny bit merciful, even now, because the judge nods. “Having endured what you have these last few weeks, I doubt very much that it would be beneficial to either of you to be separated from each other,” he says kindly.

Robin wraps his hand around Dick’s and thinks he’s so relieved he could pass out.

*********

They stay in Gotham; they don’t have much choice, what with Social Services and police interrogations and the court case against Zucco. Dick enrols in school; they pick a shabby apartment in a run-down building and hide their mothers’ rings and the matching robin bracelets in a hole in the wall behind a loose tile in the bathroom. Their parents left them enough money that they can get buy on it for maybe four, maybe five months. After that… well, that’ll depend a lot on the jobs Robin can get, he supposes.

“Is it true Batman helped them catch him? I mean, Zucco?” asks Dick, clinging to his brother’s hand as they navigate the grocery store. It’s slow going because Robin’s doing the math in his head before he puts anything in the basket.

“Don’t know,” he says. “Don’t even know if Batman’s actually real.”

Dick skips a bit; even sunk in grief and worry and the sheer upheaval of the last months, he’s still got the same boundless energy he’s always had. “I bet he’s real. I bet he helped. I bet he looks out for kids like us.”

Robin is careful not to say, I’m not so sure anymore that anyone looks out for kids like us.

*********

It’s over a decade before Robin starts wondering if it might not have been more true to say, not that they stay in Gotham, but rather than Gotham keeps them.

*********

They’re circus kids, the Grayson cousins. They’ve been performing since they could walk; they’ve always worked hard, always. Gotham’s no different, Robin tells himself. He’s used to hard work. He can hack it, for Dick’s sake.

*********

The apartment has a tiny bathroom, a smaller kitchen, one bedroom, one pull-out couch. When Dick’s nightmares wake him, he burrows under Robin’s blankets with him and sticks his stupid cold hard little feet into his cousin’s (brother’s) kidneys.

*********

Robin goes to visit Dad once a week, every week. He doesn’t always let Dick come with him.

He can talk himself hoarse in English or in Rom or even his broken high school German, but Dad never stirs.

*********

Seeing Zucco’s face across the room from him at the trial sets an anger in his bones that he won’t ever be free of.

*********

A week after Zucco’s sentencing, Gordon comes to see them.

“I just wanted to check up on you two,” he says. “The social workers say you’ve been holding up pretty good.”

“Oh, you know,” says Robin. “We have been. I mean. It’s, uh.”

From the kitchen, there’s a clatter of dishes and a string of curses – in Rom, sure, but Gordon’s a cop; he can’t mistake the tone of voice.

Robin winces.

Dick pops up at his elbows with a ragged dishcloth wrapped around his knuckles.

“I think the mashed potatoes are dead,” he says gloomily.

Gordon chuckles, and then looks sorry he did so when Robin goes red. “Baked is easier,” he says comfortingly.

Dick peers up at him anxiously. “You’re not going to take me away because Robin can’t cook, are you?”

“If that were a criterion, they would never have let me have Babs,” says Gordon. “That’s my niece. My brother died recently, and she’s come to live with us...” He glances from Dick to Robin; then past them. They haven’t actually made it out of the hallway yet. Mom would – Robin doesn’t know what Mom would do. They lived in trailers, for God’s sake. They’ve never had a hallway before. More than once he’s caught himself being actually _relieved_ that they can’t afford a bigger apartment. Neither he nor Dick would know what to do with more space.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Robin says to Gordon. It’s the same useless phrase everyone’s been using on him, but he means it here. Imagine losing Dick, ever.

The thought twists in his gut like a live thing ready to eat him from the inside out.

“Thank you,” says Gordon. His look is very steady, and very calm, and, well. He’s just the sort of person who makes you feel safe.

“I can cook really,” Robin blurts. “I mean, some stuff at least. I used to help in the kitchens at the circus. Dick didn’t, cause he would’ve fallen in a pasta pot and been boiled like a lobster.”

Gordon laughs, a real, proper, cheerful laugh.

“I wouldn’t’ve,” says Dick, indignant. “I’d’ve climbed out. I can climb _anything_.”

“You know, Babs does gymnastics,” says Gordon. “Your school got a team, or a programme, or anything?”

Dick shrugs. “Not really,” he admits. “The equipment’s pretty old, too. We run in the park, don’t we? And there’s parallel bars there, and stuff. And a gym at the community centre, we go there on weekends all the time, everyone’s real nice.”

“I’m sure Babs could tell you a few places to go, if you wanted,” says Gordon. “It was about the first thing she did when she got here. Tell you what. Why don’t you two come and have dinner with us?”

“Oh, I –“

“Cool! Thank you! I mean.”

Robin shifts, awkward. “We don’t mean to be – you know – like an inconvenience.”

“Then you’re succeeding,” says Gordon. “I’d like it. Babs and James are about your ages, and Babs doesn’t know many people in Gotham yet, so…”

He’s trying to make it sound like they’re the ones doing him a favour. It’s nice of him. Robin looks down at Dick. Dick wraps his fingers around Robin’s elbow and smirks the smirk of a kid who’s used to getting his own way – not for being spoiled, but because everyone who comes across him adores him.

Robin grins. “Thank you very much, Captain,” he says. “We’d love to.”

*********

Later on Robin will cite that dinner as the reason he becomes a cop. The Commish will profess himself flattered. Babs will tell him he’s a phony arse-licker.

*********

It’s a couple days after the dinner that Robin goes to see Captain Gordon at work.

“Sir,” he says, “I don’t know if you remember – my Dad.”

“He’s in the hospital,” says Gordon gently.

“Right. And, uh, the bills, they’re apparently disappearing into thin air, on the say-so of this Mr Wayne guy.”

Gordon’s moustache twitches. Robin presses on, feeling encouraged, and perhaps a bit guilty.

“I wanted to ask if you could put me in touch with him,” he says. “You know. To say thank you.”

*********

If Dick were here, his first question would be, “Wow, is this place _haunted_?”

Robin looks at the portrait of the Waynes over the fireplace and then at their son and thinks of the emptiness of the halls Mr Pennyworth led him through and thinks Dick’s question would probably hit a little too close to home for comfort.

“You’re very welcome,” says Mr Wayne. He’s got a warm voice, deep but not gravelly, and the shoulders and chest of a bodybuilder under his expensive suit. His eyes are blue, and they don’t smile even when his mouth does. “It was a terrible thing, and the least I could do.”

Robin looks down at the toes of his scuffed-up sneakers. (Shut up, they’re the only shoes he has right now.) “I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier.”

“Not at all. It’s been hard for you; I know that.”

The unintentional emphasis he puts on _I_ makes Robin nod. “I saw you at the circus,” he blurts.

Mr Wayne smiles faintly. “I was probably being a bit of a creeper.”

“A bit,” says Robin.

“I was younger than your brother when my parents were killed,” he says.

“Cousin,” says Robin. “I understand.”

“Of course,” says Mr Wayne quietly. “Robin –“ He pauses, as if searching for the right words. “If there’s anything you or Dick ever need, let me know.”

“Thank you, sir,” says Robin, and shakes a calloused athlete’s hand. “I appreciate that very much.”

(They both already know that he won’t ask for anything.)

*********

Dick’s always perennially disappointed that they never do meet the Batman, no matter how long they watch for him on the roof of their building. He tends to pester the Commish about him when they have dinner together, and Robin watches the flush on Babs’ cheeks when he does and thinks about the rumours he’s heard about a girl dressing up in the Batman’s colours.

He badgers her into giving him makeshift martial arts lessons until he’s got the cash for the real thing. She suggests he’d like parkour, and is – as Barbara so often is – entirely right.

*********

Dick shadows him constantly, three steps behind; often closer, never farther. One of the social workers called it separation anxiety. Robin calls it grief.

Or is that the same thing?

*********

Dick never quite loses hope that one day Dad might wake up. Robin does. It doesn’t stop him visiting, though.

He works, as much and as often as he can, mostly waiting tables. He scrapes into Gotham U and takes sociology and criminology courses; it’s kind of bullshit because Robin knows he’s only there to make the higher education requirement for the police academy. But he’s smart, and he’s interested, and even though he’s tired all the time he still makes it work.

Dick gets in trouble at school more than the social worker would like; he’s not stupid, and he doesn’t bully or anything – he’s just angry, angry like Robin. They work it off by running together in the park, by throwing themselves into gymnastics with Babs, by working and working till the anger’s hidden under effort expended.

The community centre’s really good for that. Dr Thompkins’ clinic is, too. Dick’s technically way too young to volunteer, of course, but Robin can’t leave him at home on his own, and he’s really good with the younger kids anyway. Watching him try and teach them the acrobatics that he and Robin learned before either of them could walk is kind of adorable. Of them all, Jason’s got a particular aptitude for it – good thing the kid’s so young, the perfect age to learn this stuff. Five years younger than Dick, he’s a curly-headed, snotty little brat. Robin has a fairly good idea of where all his defensive anger is coming from, exactly.

He gets an even better idea when, four days after his Dad gets out of prison, Jay shows up at the community centre with a twisted wrist and a bruised jaw.

Dick doesn’t even have to look at his brother. Robin thinks, _when I’m a police officer I can arrest the son of a bitch_.

“He works for Two-Face,” whispers Dick. “Jay’s Dad, I mean.”

“Then I’ll call Batman,” says Robin. Tips him a wink.

Jason sleeps on their couch, goes to see his Mom during the day, waits for his Dad to get arrested again, or to just stop coming home; whichever is first.

*********

They run and run and ride the subways and run some more and walk and eat and run again: avenues and boulevards, alleyways and backstreets, parks and museums, skyscrapers and suburbs. Once they ride the ferry out to the island and creep past guards and wires and checkpoints to within sight of the walls of Arkham Asylum. You’d think it might tower, but it doesn’t: it squats instead, a bloated, malevolent spider of a building.

“ _Aiya elenion ancalima_ ,” Dick mutters, staring at it. “Rob, let’s go.”

They run through the docks like there’s wolves on their tails and shout and race across intersections, dodge through cemeteries, play hide and seek in shopping mall car parks. The thing is, it doesn’t stop either of them _being_ angry.

It shows them how to _hide_ it, which is good enough for now.

*********

Much to Robin’s surprise, Mr Wayne and Mr Pennyworth come by the clinic sometimes. Dick’s acrobatics and his laughter and his irrepressible good humour summon smiles out of Mr Wayne. Once or twice they reach his eyes.

Not long after their first meeting, the community centre gets a substantial cheque or ten; so too do a few other places in the neighbourhood – the local library, the outreach centre over on 57th. Then there’s suddenly an actual gym for the kids and a soup kitchen _and_ a homeless shelter. Then there are donations to the local school as _well_.

Robin’s unaccountably suspicious of the whole business.

“It’s cause he likes us,” says Dick.

“That’s not bullshit at all,” says Robin, feeling bitter. “If he wants to help, he should just _help_.”

Dick peers up at him. “Does it matter why if it helps people just the same?” he asks.

Robin shrugs. It probably doesn’t, in the long run; especially not to the people whose lives are the better for the money Mr Wayne has been pouring into the area.

But he feels like it _should_ matter. Maybe not to him or Dick or Jason or Dr Thompkins – maybe it should matter to Mr Wayne himself, somehow.

*********

He’s worried about leaving Dick alone while he’s at the police academy upstate, but Babs makes up the spare room in the Gordon apartment and moves Dick in without further ado. Robin’s not sure she even asked her Dad, but the Commish seems happy to have him, and when Robin’s hugged Dick goodbye and is about to climb into the car, the Commish says, “I wanted to tell you – I’m proud of you, son. Your parents – and your aunt and uncle – they would be, too.”

Robin’s not sure he’s got the words to tell him how much that means to him.

When they head back to their apartment again for the first time in weeks, they find it’s been broken in to by one Jason Todd, who’s asleep on their couch, and by the looks of things has been there for a good few days.

“Mom’s dead,” he says when Robin wakes him and doesn’t cry till Dick hugs him.

*********

Dick grows up to be a handsome bastard; fortunately for Robin’s peace of mind, he’s only peripherally aware of this. If the three or four girls he goes out with during his adolescence have anything in common, it’s that they’re smart and they’re kind. Robin’s never disliked a one of them.

The only reason his own dating life isn’t a cordoned-off, still-smoking disaster area is because he doesn’t have one. He’s a single dad, OK, it’s not _easy_.

“Man, you got it all wrong,” says Jason. “That’s _why_ it’s a disaster area.”

Robin’s still not entirely sure how he ended up Jason’s legal guardian after his Mom died, a rookie cop straight out of the Academy and barely twenty-four years old. He’s pretty sure Dick used his nefarious powers of evil on all three social workers, the police officers, the Commish, Dr Thompkins and – while Robin has no proof of this, he suspects it with every fibre of his being – Bruce Wayne himself.

Some BVI shell company bought their apartment building a couple months after a supremely disinterested court order granted Robin custody. Their rent’s gone down a bit, and the new landlord has had people in to rewire the electrics, clean the stairwells, fix a broken window or two; even had the exterminator in.

Robin has his suspicions there as well.

Willis Todd is in prison again. Jason didn’t know till the social worker told him, and by all accounts he absolutely did not care.

“Trufax,” says Dick. “Let us set you up, Rob.”

“Screw off,” says Robin, amused at the idea of his baby brothers interfering in his love life.

“There’s a nurse down at the clinic who really, really likes you,” says Jason, grinning.

“Yeah, you know Lucy?”

Of course Robin knows Lucy. Luce is great.

“In on Wednesdays? Has an afro, a really nice smile, great legs? She _like_ -likes you, dude. Scout’s honour.”

Luce _likes_ him?

Hmm.

“The Scouts would kick you two to the curb within five minutes of meeting you,” he says. “Anyone want more pasta?”

*********

Luce _likes_ him.

*********

Robin and Dick introduce Jason to Dad on a blustery November morning not long after the courts officially granted Robin custody. Jason is solemn and quiet in the hospital and on the subway home.

Out on the street, he reaches over and takes Robin’s hand, little fingers clinging tight.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. Eight years old. He looks startlingly like Dick did, actually, though his chin is broader and his skin pale. Black Irish, not part Rom.

Robin squeezes hard. He knows, though he hopes Dick doesn’t and never will, how close they came to being separated, to ending up on the streets, to losing everything.

“You’re welcome.”

*********

Jason hits thirteen, sharp as a tack and becoming gangly. He’s awkward in the gym now, and Robin tells him he’ll probably be taller than either him or Dick. He starts running farther, faster, learns parkour like it’s nothing, understands the city in a deep-down instinctive way Robin can’t match and isn’t sure he wants to. Dick is eighteen, cheerful, open, friendly, driven, endlessly kind; not that Jason isn’t, but Dick is far more open about it. Barbara is twenty-four, runs the Gotham library just about single-handedly, laughs when Robin asks her, teasing, why she’s never joined the force.

Thirty is looming on Robin’s horizon, but he’s not really aware of this in any meaningful way. Sometimes he runs across a case that gives him nightmares, but for the most part he loves his job. Money’s still tight with both the boys in the house, and probably always will be, but eh. They get by. They really aren’t scraping to make the rent, and they have enough to eat. New street clothes were a luxury at the circus too.

Also? Just the other week, the Commish took him to meet the goddamn Batman.

*********

He’s standing in the street a few blocks over from Central when it hits him like a freight train:

Gotham City.

It’s autumn, like it was when they died, and the wind is careening in off the sea and whipping people’s coats, tugging their hats and hair, playing with papers clamped under arms and the hems of long skirts. It’s autumn and the trees lining the boulevard are shading red and yellow. It’s autumn and the sky is clearing, slowly, briefly, won’t stay blue too long, clouds catching on the skyscrapers far overhead. Robin thinks of running Crime Alley backstreets and how the hum of traffic matches his heartbeat for one, two, three seconds at a time before it peels off again and runs ahead of him. There’ll be rain by this evening, heavy and slanting; Dick and Jason will come home wet as drowned puppies and laugh off his concern for colds, flu, throat infections.

It’s autumn, and Robin John Grayson stands at the edge of the sidewalk to watch the boulevard stretch away into the distance; there’s the courthouse and the intersection at Commerce Street Highway, Grant Park beyond it. He feels strangely weightless; tilts his head to stare up and up at the gargoyles, the rooftops. What would it look like from the air? He’s been up to the rooftop of his building countless times. This would be different. For the first time in years he thinks of the way the ring looks when you’re about to fly, the sea of upturned faces, the darkness below and the light above.

It’s autumn, and the breath catches in his throat. It’s autumn, and Uncle John used to say that there was a hunger in Gotham, wild and raw, and that if you couldn’t feed it what it wanted from you, you ought to stay away.

It’s autumn, and Gotham almost looks beautiful.

He lets out the breath he’d been holding when Luce wraps an arm around his waist. Her red-leather-gloved hand is holding his coffee for him to take, so he does.

“What are you looking at?”

“The city.” My city.

She laughs against his shoulder. “It’s taken you eight years and more to have a Gotham moment?”

“I can be a little slow on the uptake,” Robin admits.

“Welcome home,” Luce says.

*********  

They’d like very much to move in with each other, but there’s no chance they can afford a bigger apartment, not one that’s big enough for both of them and the boys. Luce is the eldest of four herself; she gets it in a way Robin’s still relieved over, months into their relationship.

How did that even happen, seriously, it wasn’t so long ago that the idea of actually dating anybody made him feel exhausted, worse than a day waiting tables, worse than the academy, worse than Dad’s training routines – like it was too much effort to even contemplate. But he met Luce and worked with Luce and then the boys said Luce liked him and, OK, it wasn’t that much effort – it wasn’t any kind of an effort – to get lunch with her, to grab a beer with her when she got off shift at the hospital, to remember her favourite books, to keep her peanut allergy in mind when he cooked for them, to imagine her voice in his head when she wasn’t there, imagine her reactions to all the stories he wanted to tell her.

Luce makes him laugh. She gets impatient with him sometimes, just like he gets angry with her; they don’t always understand each other, the circus kid who watched his family shatter before his very eyes and the much-loved daughter of a mechanic and a waitress. That’s OK. They learn to let it be OK, to fight and reconcile and carry on. They spend Thanksgiving at her house, and Christmas at the Gordon’s – the Grayson boys have spent every Christmas at the Gordon’s for the last ten years. Barbara thinks Luce is great. Luce is enamoured of Babs’ genius-level smarts. Dick and Jason grin at each other like they’re personally responsible for the entire arrangement.

Maybe they kind of are.

*********

Possibly the weirdest thing to come out of the entire domestic disturbance call is the kid Robin spots on the fire escape of the opposite building, balanced on a railing with a camera around his neck. It’s an expensive camera, too.

He has a bad feeling about this.

Between them he and Amy manage to wrangle a peace between the irate couple who called them and the kids next door; then he leaves her to go chase after the kid on the fire escape. Robin’s quick and he’s quiet; he shimmies up the ladders with the ease of eighteen years of training, and catches the boy crouched behind a vent on the roof.

“Hey there.”

Small and thin, narrow fingers playing with his camera, zipped up tightly into an expensive jacket that had seen better days, a shock of black hair, blue eyes like Robin’s own, like Dick’s or Jason’s. Maybe nine, could be ten, even a small eleven.

The boy goes bright red.

Oh God, he can see the look on Dick’s face already.

“Hi.”

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Waiting.”

“Hmm,” says Robin. “For me?”

The boy looks scornful.

“I’m arrogant like that,” Robin says with aplomb. It garners him a small quick smile. “If not me, then who?”

The boy twists a bit. “Well.”

“Hmm?”

“Batman.”

Robin stares.

The boy holds up his camera, as if it’s all the explanation he’s capable of.

“You skulk round the city taking pictures of the Batman?”

This is an accusation that plainly strikes home. “I don’t skulk! It’s _surveillance_.”

“For who?”

“Well – me. Wait. Aren’t you John Grayson?”

Ain’t that a kick in the teeth.

“Robin,” he says. “Haven’t gone by John since my Uncle died.”

“I’m sorry,” the boy mumbles.

“It’s OK. How’d you know?”

“I was at the circus,” he says. “I – when it. I took a picture with you and Dick, he _hugged_ me.” Spoken like it was the first and last time he’d ever been hugged.

“Dick’s a cuddleslut,” says Robin, because he is.

“That’s a bad word.”

Dick’s laughing his ass off somewhere in the back of Robin’s head at the mere idea of this conversation. “Um. Yeah, it – actually, it really is. I’m sorry I used it.”

The boy nods judiciously.

Robin settles on the ground in front of him and crosses his legs. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“I ate before I came out.”

“Huh. So did I. Getting’ hungry again, though.”

“Hmm.”

“Batman come by here often?”

The boy nods importantly. “Every two weeks. It’s on his patrol route. Sometimes Batgirl takes it instead. She doesn’t follow a regular route much. I think she just goes wherever she feels like it. I hear her laughing sometimes.”

She would.

(It has not escaped Robin that while Batgirl has, on occasion, come face to face with the Commissioner, she has always calmly but carefully avoided ever meeting Commissioner Gordon’s protégé-slash-foster-kid-or-something-he-probably-got-the-job-because-the-Commish-put-in-a-word-for-him.)

And the kid’s right; they’re skirting the edges of the Bowery here, a few blocks over from Crime Alley, and there have been Batman sightings reported, like UFOs, from half a dozen of the alleyways Robin can see just from this rooftop.

“I’ve met him a couple times. On cases.”

My, what big eyes you have. “Wooooow.”

“Yup.”

“What’s he like?”

Robin considers this. Most people would say ‘intense’ or ‘driven’ or ‘aloof’ or something impressive, but, well, the thing is. Robin’s never been _impressed_ with Batman, not as such.

“Grumpy,” he says.

The boy giggles.

“Hey, you know my name. What’s yours?”

Chew on his bottom lip. “Not supposed to talk to strangers.”

Robin is offended. “You cuddled my brother. You know how often my brother cuddles me?” Every day. “How dare you?”

The boy looks at him like he knows exactly what Robin is up to. This is not a place for a child to be out alone in at night. Ever.

Robin winks at him.

The boy smiles again. “Tim,” he says at last. “I’m Tim Drake.”

“Well, Mr Drake. May I offer you a ride in a cop car and tomato soup with melted cheese sandwiches back at my place?”

Tim thinks it over.

“If Batman takes this route every two weeks, you can catch him again.”

That’s plainly convincing. Tim’s expression wavers.

Robin plays his last card. “There will be Dick-hugs. And possibly Jason-hugs, although to be honest, Jason doesn’t hug much. Then again, compared to Dick, nobody hugs much.”

“I like tomato soup,” Tim admits.

“Score,” says Robin, grinning. He holds out his arms; the boy frowns at him, so Robin just shrugs a bit and goes to pick him up.

Halfway down the fire escape, he says, “Where’s your Mom and Dad?”

“Guatemala,” says Tim.

Amy gives him a long, steady look in the car.

Robin grins at her.

“You’re a regular bleeding heart, Grayson,” she says.

“Having been one myself,” says Robin, “I’ve always had a thing for strays.”  

*********

Tim’s parents aren’t around much, and for _much_ please substitute _at all_. He lives in goddamned Gotham County, not far from Wayne Manor, and hell if Robin knows how he gets out to the city itself and into the thick of Crime Alley and Amusement Mile and the East End and Robbinsville and God only knows where else without being noticed.

He’s not sure what Dick says to the kid, but it’s not long before Timmy begins turning up at the community centre at the weekends – not just Saturdays, but Sundays too.

It’s only common sense to let him sleep over at the apartment.

*********

“You’re a pathetic, rotten pushover,” says Jason.

“I thought you and Tim got along OK,” says Robin.

“Sure,” says Jason. “Sure, sure.”

Robin puts his book away and looks up at him.

Jason fidgets.

Robin waits him out.

“He’s _always_ hanging off Dick’s apron-strings!”

Aha.

“I think that’s because Dick’s the first person who’s ever let him hang off their apron strings.”

“Hmmph,” says Jason, who does, after all, have an inkling of what that’s like.

“Don’t be selfish,” says Robin, suddenly amused by the whole situation. “Dick’s got more than enough hugs to go around.”

Jason sticks his tongue out at him and won’t talk to him for two days. Robin feels only a little bad. It’s not like they’re _adopting_ Timmy.

“Suuuuuuuuure,” says Luce. “Or, if you do, I hope the Drakes pay alimony, elsewise we’ll be shuffling back and forth between this dump and my dump for the rest of our natural lives.”

“So long as I’m shuffling with you, baby,” says Robin, laughs. She bops him with a (admittedly somewhat threadbare) cushion.

*********

They actually meet the Drakes once – him and Luce, that is – they’re at a police benefit hosted by Bruce Wayne, who’s doing his playboy act and fooling everyone. Robin knows all about wearing masks, but he’s always considered Bruce’s to be particularly ridiculous.

“I’m not sure I see what you mean,” Luce admits.

“I suppose the circumstances are pretty specific,” says Robin.

She pats his arm indulgently, making him grin.

“Robin, Robin, it’s damn good to see you,” says Bruce, shaking hands with him warmly. “And Luce – I heard you two were making each other happy. How are the boys? I haven’t been down the Centre much lately, that needs to change.”

“Dick’s OK,” says Robin, smiling. “Good, in fact. He’s at Gotham U, aiming for a sports degree – he’s been talking for months about programmes in the city for kids – gym and sports and self-defence and stuff. Jason’s enthusiastic; if they end up running a whole network of gyms together I won’t be surprised.”

“They’re both _such_ good kids,” says Bruce, a little too enthusiastic. Then, more genuine, “Remember what I said.”

Robin nods, smiles again. In his experience, he hasn’t had to ask for a thing.

It’s creepy, and it’s wrong precisely because it’s so specific, so _partisan_ , and he’s beginning to wonder if it’s the only way in which Bruce Wayne is capable of showing genuine appreciation, let alone affection.

Then a woman in red says, “Bruce?” and looks at Robin and Luce curiously.

“Janet, evening. Ah, meet Robin Grayson and Lucy Wright – they’re the kind of people this benefit is about, you know, you should see half the miracles they work in the city. Robin, Luce, this is Janet Drake.”

“Ma’am. It’s a pleasure.”

“Mrs Drake, hello.”

“Likewise.” She eyes them up, very subtle, and Robin wonders briefly if it’s the colour of their skins, the fact that they’re not rich and famous. Then Janet says, “Forgive me – Robin – but Grayson, is that the Flying –“

“Yes ma’am,” he says. “Yes it is.”

“We were there,” she says gently. “My family and I. I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope it’s not presumptuous of me to say – I thought you were incredibly talented, up there.”

She’s not too bad, provided you’re not her kid.

Tim’s visits die off for a few months though, until the papers announce another Drake Industries-funded expedition, and wham! Off they go. Three days later, Tim’s back – somewhat taller, but otherwise unchanged, and he launches himself, with cheerful abandon, first into Dick’s arms for a hug, and then into Jason’s, and finally into Robin’s. They’re not sure why, but he seems more awkward around Luce for a long time.

A pattern establishes itself; holds.

*********

When Dick gets the Wayne Foundation scholarship to Gotham U, Robin buys him a laptop.

“It’s not even second hand!” Dick says, fairly horrified at the idea of the cost.

Robin laughs. “I got news for you, little brother,” he says, locking the strongbox he keeps his gun in. “We’re not scraping to make rent anymore.”

Dick looks up from the shiny new toy on their kitchen table and grins. “That’s good to know,” he says. “Hey. I got something for you, too.”

It’s a small bundle wrapped in terrycloth, round and – oh God.

Robin unwraps the gold bracelet gently. “You weren’t supposed to know about that,” he says, swallowing hard.

“It became kinda hard to ignore when I came home from school once via that takeout place on 59th and saw it in the window of the pawnshop by the comic store,” says Dick, grinning.

Robin sits down and puts his head in his hands.

“It was that winter Jason’s Mom died, right? When it was so cold in February and the heating costs went through the roof.”

Robin nods. “I’m sorry,” he says. _Pawning_ his Mom’s bracelet, the match to Dick’s own mother’s, gifts from the grandparents neither Robin nor Dick remembers to their daughters-in-law. _God_.

“She would’ve understood,” says Dick, indignant. “They _all_ would have understood.”

“And what did you do – did you hold up a liquor sto- wait. Wait.” He points at the bracelet. “Remedial chem class?”

“You got me,” says Dick, grinning hard. “I went to Tony, see, the owner of the shop, and he’s like seventy-four or whatever and said that, well, he needed help with the shop and stacking boxes in the back and stuff and that I could work it off, so we hashed out a wage and I… did.”

“ _Tony_?” says Robin, disbelieving. “Tony Mallory the tightass-est most miserly bastard in all of uptown Gotham let you redeem a gold bracelet by _stacking shelves_ , and not only that, but you’re on first name terms with the guy?”

Dick grins, hugely proud of himself.

“Only you, little brother,” says Robin, and starts to laugh.

“My charm is legendary.” Dick smirks. “Now you know why.”

*********

When they send the Joker back to Arkham instead of the electric chair Robin smashes his fist into a concrete wall.

Barbara won’t ever walk again, and that monster doesn’t get more than a cursory punishment.

Just for an instant, he wishes Batman _did_ kill.

*********

(And he can’t forget the carousel, the shadows on the walls, the photographs glossy in the shine of his flashlight, the Commissioner’s blood everywhere and the sound – distant, harsh, distinct – the sound of laughter, twisted, shrieking, triumphant laughter out of _two_ throats, not one.)

Just for an instant, he wishes he’d pulled the trigger when he had the chance.

*********

“Somethin’s going on,” Robin says, walking into the Commissioner’s office without bothering to knock. He closes the door behind him, deliberately ignores his boss’s raised eyebrows, sharp look. “Those mugging victims, over at Mercy, the whole force is running over with rumours about those guys, let alone the precinct. Somethin’s going on.”

He comes closer, reminded of spooked, frightened children and half-feral alley cats. This is Gordon, for God’s sake, the man who’s been another father to him for years.

Gordon takes his glasses off, rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Don’t make me write you up,” he says.

“Let me help,” says Robin.

Gordon sighs. “They weren’t mugging _victims_.”

The air in the office is stale, heavy with cigarette smoke. There’s a rule somewhere about reporting people who continue to smoke on the premises to the Commissioner. Robin wants to open a window. He doesn’t.

“They _were_ the muggers.”

“Batman.” Never known for mercy, particularly, except that he’s never killed. Never known for beating anyone like that, either.

“The business with the Joker, it… it hit him hard.”

“It hit him hard,” says Robin, breathless with disbelief. “Is it _him_ who’ll never walk again?”

“I know it sounds like I’m making excuses for him.”

“Because you _are_.”

Gordon slaps a hand on the table top. “You get one free pass, Grayson,” he says forcefully. “ _Just one_.”

One’s enough, Robin thinks. He stands in silence for – count ‘em – twenty seconds. Then he says, “What will you do?”

“He’s my friend,” says Gordon, and his face twists. Robin remembers the water-cooler gossip, the cafeteria talk, about Harvey Dent, about the Good Old Days. “He gets one free pass. Just one.”

*********

Babs is very pale, and very thin, and very angry.

“Fascinating,” she says when Robin’s finished.

“Don’t you blow me off, Batgirl,” says Robin.

Barbara drops her hands to the covers draped across her knees and barks a laugh. “Am I that transparent?”

“We’re all pretty transparent to the people we love, I think.”

“Hmm.”

“You have to tell me how to stop him.”

“You don’t,” says Barbara angrily. “You don’t stop him, you can’t talk him out of it, he just keeps on… he just doesn’t _stop_. The best you can do is… lead by a kind of example, keep chipping away, never leaving him alone. I quit, you know, I put the costume away. It was only a few months ago, actually. I couldn’t keep doing it. Not the kicking criminals in the face, I loved that, that was the definition of purest awesome.”

Robin laughs. It conjures an answering smile out of Babs.

“But the – the feeling like if I hung around for much longer, I’d have as little in my life as he has in his. I couldn’t give myself up to his mission the way he has, and I certainly couldn’t be his – his morality pet. His tie to sanity. Because I think I was, you know. Me and Dad, and Al-“

“-fred Pennyworth?”

“Oh!” says Barbara. “You _are_ good.”

Robin smiles. There’s nothing mirthful about it. “I know what it’s like,” he says. “To be angry in your bones. I know what it looks like in the mirror. I can see it in other people.”

“You’re up to something,” says Babs.

“I am,” Robin agrees. “I don’t know exactly what, but I am.” He takes her hands in his and kisses her knuckles the way his Dad would sometimes kiss his Mom’s hands before they went up.

“Send the boys to see me,” says Barbara.

It’s the first time she’s asked for specific visitors since the shooting.

“They’ll be here first thing tomorrow morning,” Robin promises.

*********

Robin knows there’s something wrong with the world when he’s been reduced to discussing Batman’s psychological problems with the man’s twelve-year-old stalker.

“He’s not just been more violent,” says Tim seriously. “He’s been – you know, reckless, angry.”

“He’s always been angry,” says Robin. “If he wasn’t angry he wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.”

“Hmm,” says Tim. “D’you think he needs another Batgirl?”

“I don’t think we’re going to help him by replacing her,” says Robin. “Not as such. Besides, who were you going to ask to do it? Look what happened –“

“To Barbara Gordon.”

Robin smiles faintly. “You figure that out when?”

“Batgirl hasn’t been on the streets for a couple months, but it was Barbara Gordon’s shooting that prompted the change in Batman. Unless he’s having an affair or something with his best friend’s daughter, she’d have to be Batgirl. No one else is that close to him.”

“True. I mean, your logic’s gross, but accurate.”

Tim grins, a bit sheepishly.

“Do Dick and Jason know?”

“Dick probably has a fairly good idea of what Babs has been up to, yeah. They’re pretty tight. Jason hasn’t known her as long, but he’s smart – hard to say. We don’t talk about it.”

“You all just kind of climb over the elephant and pretend it’s not there?”

Tim sounds disapproving. Robin passes him the pie dish and watches him lever another piece onto his plate before he says, “Sort of like the way I’ve always been careful not to bring up your asshole neglectful parents with you.”

“They’re not –“

“They’ve been in Brazil for two months.”

“That just –“

“It was your birthday last week.”

“I don’t need –“

“Take it from someone who doesn’t have parents anymore,” says Robin sharply. “ _You need them_.”

Tim eats his pie in silence. When he’s finished, he puts his fork down and says, so quietly Robin could easily pretend to miss it, “I’ve got you guys.”

“Yeah you do,” says Robin.

Tim smiles. Score!

“So what are we going to do about Batman?”

Robin sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. “Babs says he needs a kind of – morality pet. Someone who’s always around to keep him sane.”

Tim considers this. “That’s really scary.”

And this, of course, is the point at which Dick and Jason clatter in.

“He’s spent his adult life wearing a Halloween costume to fight crime in, the man’s not exactly rational,” says Robin, heaving himself upright. “Hey guys. There’s pie if you want it.”

“Hey. Hi, Tim. What is that, cherry? Who’s not rational?”

“It’s really good, Jay,” says Tim.

“Who’s not rational?” Jason repeats.

Robin and Tim exchange a look.

Tim says, “Batman.”

Dick snorts, slings his sports bag into a corner of the kitchen. “He likes to kick people in the face while wearing spandex, what did you expect?”

Robin says, “Babs, maybe.”

Jason pulls a face. Dick grins. “She won’t tell who he is.”

“I know who he is,” says Robin. “And, here’s the kicker. If he doesn’t rein himself in, and pretty sharpish, I’m gonna be arresting him the next time the Batsignal goes up.”

“You can’t do that!” Jason bursts out.

“Can’t I?” says Robin grimly. “Strictly speaking, the man’s a vigilante working outside the law. I have at the very least a moral obligation to take my suspicions about his identity to the Commissioner. Hell, if IA ever make it to Gotham the Commish himself would be under attack for working with him.”

Dick crosses his arms over his chest.

“Come on,” says Jason. “Batman’s – OK, he’s kind of hilarious. I can say that, cause you’re a _real_ cop. But people, you know, people feel safer because of him. How many people have we met who mighta died if he hadn’t shown up?”

“Maybe not enough,” says Robin. “Not anymore.”

“Oh, look,” says Jason. “Maybe I’m just being the idiot kid who’s hoping for a miracle and wishing Captain America were real, but, listen. Does it matter what he’s doing if he’s still helping people?”

“Yes,” says Robin, voice hard with more certainty than he had had when Dick asked him the same thing years ago. “Yes, it matters. It has to matter. You gotta judge by people’s actions, not their intentions, not even the end fucking results. That’s the only kind of morality that’s worth a damn. Anything else is just – circles, spirals of hurt. It has to stop somewhere. _It has to_.”

The boys are silent.

Finally: “Will the Commish go down with him?” Dick asks bluntly.

“Yes,” says Robin. “Almost certainly. He allowed him to operate. Every chance that Babs will too, as an accomplice. They’ll blame her for the shooting, say she brought it on herself.”

He can see the looks on the faces of the IA guys already, the slick chains they’ll spin out of half-truths and necessities.

“Christ.”

“What are we going to do?” Tim asks again.

Dick moves, sidling sideways, picks up his sports bag. It’s stuffed with equipment: jumplines, grapple guns, one of those ridiculous bat-shaped boomerang things.

“Babs’ stash,” he says.

“You better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking,” says Robin harshly.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking,” says Dick. He’s unusually serious, and very still. Dick is never, ever, still. “Except that he either needs to be helped or he needs to be stopped. We owe the Commish and we owe Babs and -”

_And we owe Gotham_ , like the city’s a live thing, a pet to be treated well, played with, punished for wrongdoing. Well, if it is a pet, it’s a filthy great wolf, feral and savage.

(They love it just the same.)

“Hell,” says Jason. “Might as well be us.”

*********

In the end, Robin does what he knew all along he’d have to do. He catches the bus out to Gotham County with Tim, drops him off at home, walks the mile or so to the gates of Wayne Manor. Bruce is disinclined to accept visitors, apparently, but Mr Pennyworth thinks differently.

Bruce greets him with a smile and a handshake. His knuckles are scabbed over.

“Accident on the tennis court,” he chuckles.

“Huh,” says Robin. “I was guessing muggers in the Bowery, myself.”

Bruce goes very still.

“It’s not hard,” says Robin gently. “Not when you’ve got – certain things in common.”

“I see,” says Bruce, but it’s clear that he doesn’t, not really. It clicks for Robin then, it all makes sense: that’s the trouble with Bruce Wayne, that’s been the trouble all along. He thinks he’s helping, and in many ways he is, but he cannot and probably will not ever understand that not all tragedies are the same. Everything (everyone) he sees, he sees through the prism of his own pain, projecting his personal coping mechanisms onto the world around him. When Bruce Wayne helps, he helps people whom he (thinks he) understands. When Batman helps, he does it because it’s an excuse to let out some of the violence and the anger he carries around with him.

It pisses Robin off, furiously, instantly, utterly. No one should ever have to depend on the whims of one abandoned boy, one _ferociously violent_ Peter Pan of a boy, in order to feel safe. No one should have to hope and pray for his presence the way some people pray to God as they walk through their own neighbourhood; no one should ever be dependent on the mysteries of company charity policies in order to be guaranteed the food, the shelter they need to survive.

It’s not fucking good enough. It will never, ever, be good enough.

It’s all they’ve got, so they’d better hang on to it. Call it an interim solution.

(This is usually the point in the conversation where Luce will say, “Don’t take this the wrong way, love, but you’re a Communist.” And Robin will say, “Socialist, thank you.”)

 “Have you spoken to the Commish?”

“Not lately,” says Bruce. His voice has hardened; it’s always been deep. Now it’s also rough, angry. Robin’s heard that voice before. “What do you want?”

Robin’s eyes narrow. “Oh, a few million in cash, and maybe one of those neat little Ducatis.”

It makes him feel better, strangely, that Bruce doesn’t take him seriously for an instant. He snorts. “I’m sure.”

“You don’t know how close you are to being shut down.”

Bruce doesn’t look away from him. Doesn’t speak, either. He _thinks_ it’s intimidating, but Robin’s been waiting out his little brothers for years now. Finally, Bruce shifts, very slightly.

“Does that concern you?”

Robin smiles. “I’d sleep easier if you were.” It’s not a hundred percent true. Maybe sixty-five or so.

Oh, that gets a reaction.

“You think you can do it all on your own.”

“I think it’s not your place to decide what’s best for this city. I think what you’re doing is only underscoring the structural problems that are already there. I think the Batman props up the system that made him necessary in the first place; it’s a vicious cycle.” He sits down, crosses his legs. “I think you won’t stop of your own free will because you’re too fucked in the head to even contemplate it, and I think you’re too powerful to _be_ stopped.”

“Are you here to do damage control?” Barely restrained fury.

“Something like that,” says Robin.

“I caught Zucco.”

“Like you’re scoring a point. Has it ever occurred to you that if you consider the defining difference between you and a supervillain to be nothing more than your unwillingness to kill, you’re probably already pretty fucking far gone? Because that line, Bruce. That line is all in your head, and it’s thinner than a tripwire.”

He hasn’t cursed this much in years.

“Get. Out.”

“Fuck you sideways. Babs says you need someone to keep you sane. Consider me your new Jiminy Cricket.”

For the first time an emotion other than sham joviality or blank fury crosses Bruce’s face; it might be called amusement. Robin suspects that he’s the first person to speak to Bruce like this in a very long time. He might even be the first person to _ever_ speak to Bruce like this.

He was sort of banking on that. Element of surprise: the novelty of his attitude will keep Bruce in his seat, keep him listening. (He hopes.) Curiosity killed the cat.

Satisfaction brought him back.

“Out of the goodness of your heart?” snaps Bruce.

Robin grins. “Having been one myself,” he explains, “I’ve always had a thing for strays.”


End file.
